Fr Ronald Rolheiser, Author at Catholic Herald

Fr Ronald Rolheiser

June 02, 2016

The spirituality writer Tom Stella tells a story about three monks at prayer in their chapel. The first monk imagines himself being carried up to heaven by the angels. The second monk imagines himself already in heaven, chanting God’s praises with the angels and saints. The third monk cannot focus on any holy thoughts but

A deathbed lesson on faith and fear

May 26, 2016

“A common soldier dies without fear, yet Jesus died afraid.” Iris Murdoch wrote that, and this truth can be somewhat disconcerting. Why? If someone dies with deep faith, shouldn’t he or she die with a certain calm and trust drawn from that faith? Wouldn’t the opposite seem more logical – that is, if someone dies

Youth today: who are they really?

May 19, 2016

A seminarian I know recently went to a party on a Friday evening at a local university campus. The group was a crowd of young students and when he was introduced as a seminarian, as someone who was trying to become a priest and who had taken a vow of celibacy, the mention of celibacy

The Ten Commandments of Mercy

May 12, 2016

Among the Ten Commandments, one begins with the word “remember”: “Remember to keep holy the Sabbath day”. It reminds us to recall something we already know. There are commandments of mercy written into our very DNA. We already know them, but we need to remember them more explicitly. What are they? The Ten Commandments of Mercy:

Daniel Berrigan – RIP

May 05, 2016

“Before you get serious about Jesus, first consider how good you’re going to look on wood!” Daniel Berrigan wrote those words and they express a lot about who he was and what he believed in. He died on April 30, aged 94. No short tribute can do justice to Dan Berrigan. He defies quick definition

Marking an anniversary

April 28, 2016

What we cease to celebrate we will soon cease to cherish. This year, 2016, marks the 200th anniversary of the founding of the religious congregation to which I belong, the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate. We have a proud history, 200 years now, of ministering to the poor around the world. This merits celebrating. As

Loyalty and patriotism revisited

April 21, 2016

In a recent article in America magazine, Grant Kaplan, commenting on the challenge of the Resurrection, makes this comment: “Unlike previous communities in which the bond among members forges itself through those it excludes and scapegoats, the gratuity of the Resurrection allows for a community shaped by forgiven-forgivers.” What he is saying, among other things,

Love: a projection and a reality

April 14, 2016

The famed Jungian writer Robert Johnson makes this observation about love: “To fall in love is to project the most noble and infinitely valuable part of one’s being onto another human being … We have to say that the divinity we see in others is truly there, but we don’t have a right to see

The power of prayer and ritual

April 07, 2016

In the movie based on Jane Austen’s classic novel Sense and Sensibility, there’s a very poignant scene where one of her young heroines, suffering from acute pneumonia, is lying in bed hovering between life and death. A young man, very much in love with her, is pacing back and forth, highly agitated, frustrated by his

The triumph of goodness

March 31, 2016

The stone that rolled away from the tomb of Jesus continues to roll away from every sort of grave. Goodness cannot be held, captured or put to death. It evades its pursuers, escapes capture, slips away, hides out, even leaves the churches sometimes, but forever rises, again and again, all over the world. Such is

The power of fear

March 24, 2016

Fear is the heartbeat of the powerless. So writes Cor de Jonghe. That’s true. We can deal with most everything, except fear. The late Belgian spiritual writer Bieke Vandekerckhove, in her very fine book The Taste of Silence, shared honestly her experience of the demons that beset her as she faced a terminal illness at

How dying matures the soul

March 17, 2016

In a deeply insightful book, The Grace of Dying, Kathleen Dowling Singh shares insights she has gleaned as a health professional who has been in attendance to hundreds of people while they are dying. Among other things, she suggests that the dying process itself, in her words, “is exquisitely calibrated to automatically produce union with Spirit”.

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